Mobile Analytics at MobileMonday Madrid
1 Comment Published by Rudy De Waele June 14th, 2008 in Mobile Marketing, Mobile Events, Announcements, Analysis, Mobile Advertising, MobileMonday, Mobile Search, mobile 2.0, Trends, Mobile Monday, Nokia, Convergence, Events
The next Mobile Monday Madrid on June 16, 2008 in collaboration with Bango will dive into statistical data and analyse mobile usage, under the topic Mobile Analytics with some experienced players from the industry, including Patrick Dost, Director General, Nedstat España; Sixto Arias, managing director of Mobext (Havas Digital Mobile Marketing Division), Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing, of Bango and Andres Lozano Sanudo, Head of Spain, Portugal and LATAM of Nokia Interactive Advertising.
As usual, a networking party will follow the conference. Attendance is free; all you need to do is register and/or confirm your presence for this event at www.mobilemondaymadrid.com/subscribe/ and reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book now to avoid being left out!
Analysis, analytics, Announcements, bango, campaign, convergence, events, havas, Havas Digital Mobile Marketing Division, havas international, madrid, marketing, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, mobile analytics, Mobile Events, mobile marketing, Mobile Monday, Mobile Search, mobile search engine optimization, mobile seo, mobilemonday, nedstat, nokia, nokia interactive advertising, optimisation, optimization, search engine optimisation, SEO, Trends
Full MEX Conference Agenda 2008 Published
0 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele April 26th, 2008 in Social Media, Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Events, Mobile Content, Analysis, User-Experience, Usability, Ethnographics, Mobile Search, Mobile OS, mobile 2.0, Experience Design, Trends, Awards, Startups, iPhone, Events
One of my favorite conferences last year, the MEX Mobile User Experience Conference, has published its agenda for this years’ conference on May 27-28 in London. Check the agenda and speaker list for full details.
A special discount is offered to mTrends readers (check details at the bottom of this post).
The conference helps executives to gain a deeper understand of customer behaviour and translate that knowledge into better mobile products. The key objective is raising awareness of user experience issues as a strategic priority for everyone in the value chain, encouraging the mobile business to put consumer needs at the heart of the industry.
It is a very different style of conference. Each event is researched and developed by a team with a passion for mobile and unique insight drawn from years of industry experience. Corporate pitches are outlawed, everyone plays a role in setting the agenda and we go to extraordinary lengths to provide the highest standards of service.
This years’ conference programme is based around a 10 point Manifesto (download pdf here) for enhancing the mobile user experience. Each of the 10 Manifesto statements is addressed through a diverse range of presentations, panel discussions and collaborative breakout groups.
Topics include…
- Content itself will be the interface of the future
- Handsets are no longer just for the hand
- Fragmentation is the enemy of innovation
- Fashion is a stronger motivator than functionality
- The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience
- Search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment
- Intelligent contact lists are the future centres of the user interface
- Mobile payments herald the next generational shift
- Users as individuals: uniquely complex and contradictory
- The potential of smart voice
Some of the speakers include:
On the opening night there is also a reception to announce the Winners of the 2008 MEX Design Competition. Check it out, some really great stuff out there! If you design interfaces and have a compelling idea or product to delight customers and enhance the mobile user experience, you can still participate, the deadline for entries is 23:00 GMT, Friday, 2nd May 2008.
MEX is now less than 5 weeks away and, as with all previous MEX events, the organizers target to sell out well in advance on the conference date. If you’ve not yet reserved your place at the event, now is the time to do so - passes are selling out fast.
mTrends readers can get a 10% discount on a conference attendance pass (priced at GBP 1499). Go to the registration form and enter ‘MM24′ in the ‘partner code’ box on the registration form.
Hope to see you there!
Analysis, Awards, conference, ethnographics, events, Experience Design, iphone, london, MEX, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, Mobile OS, Mobile Search, mobile user experience, mobile web, social media, startups, Trends, usability, user experience
Mobile 2.0 slides @ Over The Air
0 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele April 9th, 2008 in Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, web 2.0, Mobile Events, Mobile Content, Mashup, MobileMonday, User-Experience, Usability, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Trends, Mobile Culture, Mobile Monday, Innovation, Startups, Events, DevelopersHere are my Mobile 2.0 slides of the keynote I did last Friday in London at the Over The Air event, a great initiative by Daniel Appelquist and Ian Forrester. Over the Air was organised by Mobile Monday London, hosted by Imperial College and supported by the BBC.
Kudos to the whole team who made this happen, this was more than just a developers’ conference, more than just a workshop or a barcamp… It was a 48 hours of mobile and wireless development experiment bringing together some +400 developers and mobile industry experts with great sessions on various industry related topics… Lots of great people and ideas gathered during these 2 days. Check the Over The Air website to view the presentations from other keynotes and sessions.
The were 21 competition entries for the mobile application prototype competition. The winners were:
* Overall Best Prototype - Mr. Tomm (Future Platforms)
* Best Mobile Widget - Auto Widget Configurator (Owen)
* Best Hardware hack - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Best Use of Multimedia - 21st Century Fridge Door (Orange Pirate)
* Best Use of Wireless, Bluetooth or RFID - Bluetooth FOAF (Owend)
* Most elegant solution - Twitter Client for Windows (Dale Lane)
* Most over engineered - Clever Social Tool (Alex squared)
* Most practical / ready for market - Social Network Open Butler (SNOB)
* Best mobile web application - Browser Sync
* Best design / user experience prototype - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Best Location Aware Award - Capture the Flag (Location based games)
* Audience Favorite - Capture the Flag by the Pink Pirates
And the winners in the unofficial categories were:
* Fun Award - Phone Fight (lastminute.com labs)
* Most likely the succeed with the CIA - (Social Tracker)
More info on the winners, pictures, and other follow-ups will be posted on the Over The Air website later on.
2.0, Analysis, augmentedreality, bebo, biometrics, buzzd, cell, cellity, cellphone, communities, connected, consumption, convergence, Cool Devices, Developers, dopplr, ecosystem, events, facebook, floobs, funambol, Games, getjar, GPS, im, image recognition, imagerecognition, innovation, iptv, itsmy, kimia, kyte, kyte.tv, lbs, lifestream, lifestreaming, location, location based, Mashup, media, messaging, messenger, microblogging, mig33, mippin, mms, mobile, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Culture, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile Monday, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobile2.0, mobile20, mobilemonday, mobileweb, morph, mtrends, myspace, mystrands, netvibes, nimbuzz, nokia, openmoko, Operators, Over The Air, overtheair, overtheair08, phone, presentations, proximity, Proximity Marketing, qik, QR codes, recommendation, recommender, retail, rudydewaele, seesmic, sensoring, skuair, sms, social media, socialmedia, start up, startup, startups, taptu, transactions, Trends, trutap, usability, user experience, voip, web 2.0, web2.0
Handsets and no longer just for the hand
3 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele March 24th, 2008 in Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile Events, Cool Devices, Analysis, User-Experience, Usability, mobile 2.0, Experience Design, Trends, Innovation, Startups, iPhone, Multi-Touch Screen, Convergence, Events
This is one of a series of guest articles by Marek Pawlowski, Editorial Director at PMN and founder of the MEX conference, examining the key mobile user experience issues facing the telecoms industry in 2008. These themes are highlighted in PMN’s 2008 MEX Manifesto and will be at the heart of the agenda for the 4th annual MEX conference in London on 27th - 28th May 2008.
Mobile phones were traditionally designed with the comfort of the ear in mind. The original Motorola flips, the Nokia ‘banana phone’ and the numerous chunky ‘bricks’ of the 1990s were all built primarily around the need for a device which could be held to the face for extended periods of time. If we look at how the market has evolved today, the design requirements are very different because phones are as much about visual activites like texting, email, photos and web pages as they are about the traditional function of voice.
Consider the ratio of screen size verus the overall ‘face’ area of the device. Over time, displays have come to dominate the main interaction surface of the mobile phone. If you could track this ratio over the lifetime of the mobile industry, it would show a steadily increasing trend, starting with the single line ‘dot matrix’ displays of the 1980s and rising through to the massive screens of the iPhone, Prada phone, Viewty and HTC Touch.
The iPhone and its touchscreen have ushered in a boom for the UI design industry. Faced with Apple as a new competitor, rival handset manufacturers are recruiting UI experts as never before. Spurred in to action by the fear of being left behind, management teams throughout the device business are now mandating a selection of touchscreen products in their portfolio. iPhone sales volumes may still be less than a single digit percentage of the market, but there is no doubting the device has established a new design benchmark.
This sudden willingness to embrace the touchscreen is providing UI designers with more scope than ever before to create flexible interaction layers which adapt to provide the best interface method for individual applications.
What we are seeing is the digitisation of the man machine interaction (MMI) layer and the consequences will be profound.
The iPhone was the first device brave enough to implement the MMI entirely in software. In doing so, Apple prompted the industry to consider what could be achieved once it was freed from having to interact with every application through the same three or four hardware buttons.
The manufacturers with an established and consistent DNA for hardware-based MMI are now pondering how they can maintain the value of their existing investment in MMI consistency and still introduce new innovations with the same ‘wow’ factor as the Apple UI. It’s a very tough question and one that is currently keeping a huge number of UI designers and consultants in well paid work!
However, while UI teams around the world are getting to grips with this major strategic issue, I would like to sound two notes of warning.
Firstly, a funky new UI is never the answer to all your user experience problems - there’s no silver bullet. Any new UI or MMI innovations must be part of an overall commitment to user experience. This is the most fundamental principle of everything we do with our MEX research and consultancy work - it is also the main theme of our 2008 MEX conference and the MEX Design Competition.
User experience is not a set of technologies or a layer within the product design process: it is about having a customer-centred approach at the heart of everything you do, from marketing strategy to after-sales support.
You need only spend a couple of hours with the a device like the HTC Touch to recognise that, however attractive the top layer of the UI, the overall user experience will be fatally flawed if you don’t invest in the deep level of integration required to make a new interaction methodology really work.
Secondly, the priorities of interaction design are about to change again. Handsets will no longer just be for the hand (this is one of 10 key Manifesto statements for the 2008 MEX conference).
The mobile phone started as a device for the ear and has since become a device that is also for the eye. In both of these scenarios, the consistent factor is that the phone remains cradled in the palm of the hand - in 30 years of mobile handset design, this has been one of the few constants.
Finally, that is starting to change. Driven by applications like mapping, music, video and tele-conferencing, the handset is increasingly migrating from our palms and finding a new place in the environment around us.
We are starting to see phones attached to the car dashboard or pumping out music from the bookshelf of a teenager’s bedroom. They are being propped up on tables so kids can watch videos on holiday and plugged in to TVs to drive photo slideshows.
Over time, the average interaction distance between the users and their phones will increase significantly from the few centimetres we see today. Interaction designers can no longer take it for granted that the user will be holding the device in the their hand, with their face close to the screen.
This has big implications for the design of software, the choice of input method, the use of haptics and the role of accessories to extend the experience.
As an example, I have my Nokia N95 mounted on the dashboard of the car. It can provide GPS-enabled mapping, speakerphone and even play my music tracks through the car audio system. However, many of these features are simply too difficult to use unless I’m actually holding the device in my hand.
The keys are too small to press accurately while driving, so searching for an address in the mapping application is impossible unless you are parked. Similarly, I am unable to find the song I want in my music library or build a new playlist. The font size on-screen is also difficult to read at that distance. At night, when the dashboard of the car dims to make it easier to see the road, the handset continues to blaze at full brightness.
This is not meant to be a criticism of the N95 in particular, but rather an illustration of how the new capabilities of mobile phones are enabling out-of-hand applications while the user interaction model is still centred on in-hand scenarios.
There are all sorts of technologies emerging which could improve this experience. Voice recognition is getting better all the time (e.g. Nuance’s ’speak-to-search’ application). Nokia is implementing touchscreen support in Series 60, allowing for more flexible, adaptive UI design. Start-ups like Zeemote have even developed Bluetooth remote controls, allowing you to interact with your mobile phone at a distance (its initial focus is on handheld gaming).
Microvision, with a long-history in new display technologies, is one of several companies which has created a ‘pico’ projector using laser technology to beam videos and photos on to remote surfaces. Along with others, Microvision has also developed wearable glasses which display the screen as a tiny image in front of the eye which, because of its proximity, appears equivalent to a large home cinema screen.
For music, more and more handset manufacturers and third parties are offering speaker systems which turn mobile phones into compelling audio systems. One of the most attractive I’ve seen is the Bowers and Wilkins iPhone speaker dock designed by Native (Thomas Kleist, Director of UI Design at Native, is one of our speakers at the 2008 MEX Conference on 27th - 28th May in London). It transforms the iPhone from a personal media player into a room-filling audio experience that puts the mobile phone at the heart of the environment.
The industry faces a real and complex challenge over the next few years. On the one hand, device manufacturers must grapple with the immediate competitive implications of the iPhone and the growth in touchscreen devices. On the other, companies throughout the industry are seeking to expand the role of the phone into every area of our daily lives, including many scenarios where the handset will actually no longer be held in our hands.
We’ll be tackling these issues from several angles at MEX, the 4th annual PMN Mobile User Experience conference, in London on 27th - 28th May 2008. ‘Handsets are no longer just for the hand‘ is one of the 10 key statements on our MEX Manifesto and will be addressed by Steve Chambers, President of Mobile and Consumer Services at Nuance. He will give a presentation to provoke and inspire a series of breakout discussions, where 100 leading thinkers from across the mobile business will work together to explore a number of questions relating to this topic.
Thomas Kleist, Director of UI Design at Native, will speak on ‘Content itself is the new interface‘. Also addressing this topic will be Ocean Observations, before we open the session to a conference-wide debate.
Join the debate on our blog before the MEX conference opens
Can we further refine the standard twelve key monobloc design to give us greater flexibility to support these functions? How much flexibility do we have in software platforms to support these different usage methods? At what stage in the design process do we focus on particular user requirements and build them in to the hardware specification? Post your comments using the link below…
http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/
Analysis, conference, convergence, Cool Devices, design, design competition, designers, events, Experience Design, handsets, innovation, iphone, london, manifesto, marekpawloski, MEX, MEX Conference, mex08, mex2008, mexconference, mobile, Mobile Events, Mobile Lifestyle, Multi Touch Screen, startups, Trends, ui, usability, user experience
Mobile 2.0 @ Plugg
14 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele March 22nd, 2008 in Social Media, Operators, Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, Mobile Lifestyle, web 2.0, Mobile Events, Mobile Content, Cool Devices, Analysis, Mobile Advertising, Mashup, Mobile Search, Mobile OS, LBS, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Trends, Proximity Marketing, Image Recognition, QR codes, Innovation, Spanish Startups, Mobile Video, Startups, Nokia, IPTV, Mobile Games, Location-Based, ConvergenceHere’s my updated overview presentation on Mobile 2.0 I did last week in Brussels at the Plugg Conference, a great initiative by Robin Wauters. The conference included a Start-Ups Rally won by Viewdle.
I saw many people taking pictures during the presentation 
I you’re one of them, and if you want to share them just ping me if you have some good ones, I’ll be happy to link them and/or share them with my readers.
NOTE: As for the startups represented here, they are only some of the ones I am following. This is not intented as a complete overview but a representation and moment in time. If you’re not included in this presentation you might be in my next one 
Just ping me if I missed you somehow.
Some bloggers reported already (in Dutch) on my presentation:
Tom Wesseling @ Marketingfacts
2.0, Analysis, augmentedreality, bebo, biometrics, buzzd, cell, cellity, cellphone, communities, connected, consumption, convergence, Cool Devices, dopplr, ecosystem, facebook, floobs, funambol, Games, getjar, GPS, im, image recognition, imagerecognition, innovation, iptv, itsmy, kimia, kyte, kyte.tv, lbs, lifestream, lifestreaming, location, location based, Mashup, media, messaging, messenger, microblogging, mig33, mippin, mms, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content, Mobile Events, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile web, mobile2, mobile2.0, mobile20, mobileweb, modu, morph, mtrends, myspace, mystrands, netvibes, nimbuzz, nokia, openmoko, Operators, phone, plugg, proximity, Proximity Marketing, qik, QR codes, recommendation, recommender, retail, rudydewaele, seesmic, sensoring, skuair, sms, social media, socialmedia, spanish startups, start up, startup, startups, taptu, transactions, Trends, trutap, voip, web 2.0, web2.0, youtube
Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008
6 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele January 6th, 2008 in mobile 2.02007 was a very prosperous and exciting year for mobile technology in general, still we’re just at the beginning of a new era of more magic to come in the mobile and web convergent area’s. So, traditionally I’m writing down 10 Mobile Trends for the coming year, always a good personal excercise how close one is predicting mobile market trends and an indicator of what I think will matter in 2008.
Read my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2007 and check for yourself my gut feeling on what happened yet and what is still to come. It seems very obvious and easy but predicting trends can be tricky, just try it for yourself! Check also my del.icio.us for some interesting predictions from other technology blogs I bookmarked during holidays. One of my favorite readings during holidays is still Carlo Longino’s and Russell Buckley’s yearly predictions at Mobhappy. Do check them out!
So here are my Mobile and Wireless Trends for 2008:
- Google’s Android and the Open Handset Alliance will definately take off in 2008. While the iPhone is doing probably the best job embracing mobile and web convergence, the Apple OS is still a closed system and used by a rather small market segment of users. Nokia’s Nseries - though all remarkeable devices - didn’t produce any breakthrough Symbian OS changes last year and is still too buggy to go mass-market - I don’t see my sister or father perform a device software update; which leaves the opportunity for Google and the Open Handset Alliance to get the new Linux-based operating system Android on several cutting-edge smartphones before year-end. Mobile OS, a truely competitive space in 2008!
- The Rise of the Mobile Social Networks. M:Metrics released some promising data mid-2007 on the rise of the Mobile Social Networks. With the big social media networks all going mobile in 2007 (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Bebo, …), this trend will continue to rise in 2008, sustained by more flat rate introductions on different markets.
- Apple will be seriously attacked by the music industry on its own, once disruptive, iTunes business model. 2008 will be the year of further downfall of DRM and the raise of watermarked audio-files. With Sony BMG planning to drop DRM - the last of the Big Four record labels with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI Music, to throw in the towel on digital rights management. The end of DRM might embolden a host of new, online download venues initiated by the Big Four in its searches for a successful digital strategy. Note also the rise of new business models (!) giving away DRM-free, ad-supported music downloads, like the recently founded Rcrd Lbl by Peter Rojas. Read my DRM Free at Last! for a recent overview and links to previous posts on this topic.
- Telefonica will introduce the 3G iPhone. To be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February?
- The return of the Location-Based Services. Since Nokia introduced the Nseries N95 with built in GPS, Location-Based Services are becoming exciting again. A new wave of mobile services and applications build on the location of the user (cell-ID and/or GPS) will see the light this year, driven by the open Google Maps API and flickr’s geotagged photo function. Read also my early 2005 coverage on the formerly known MoSoSos.
- First iPhone competitors coming to market. Nokia will introduce a serious competitor for the iPhone. It has the hardware manufacturing intelligence and knowledge to come up with its own multi-touch screen interface. Biggest challenge for Nokia (and other manufacturers) will be to keep the OS user-experience as simple as the iPhone. Expect some great innovating devices from HTC too in 2008! (checkout the HTC Touch Dual).
- Mobile Video Blogging starting to taking off. Though still to be used by early adopters, mobile video blogging tools such as Kyte.tv mobile are already doing a great job with Floobs and KaZiVu also looking very promising (both still in beta), not to forget about YouTube Mobile. All eyes will be on Seesmic however that has the right start-up vibe - instigated daily by its impressive experienced shareholders (and web 2.0 icons) and its very active beta-testers community. Imagining Seesmic to be used on your mobile phone is an easy one, the challenges for Seesmic are to bypass the complex technical issues and delivery of its great idea.
- Mobile search, as already predicted last year will continue to be one of the most important and most used mobile applications. I keep this one in my list adding that some new players might disrupt the big Search market players, not having figured out the real mobile search issues such as accuracy, context, relevance, latency and the correct display of local and niche results.
- PRM (Personal Rights Management) and Privacy policies and procedures will be high on the agenda for every entreprise and conscious connected individuals. Already talk of the connected crowds at LeWeb3, opening the Social Graphs might appear cool in your social media community but has to be done right! As a starter, check out Dataportability.org and watch Robert Scoble explaining his recent portability issues with Facebook.
- Twitter and the breakthrough of the ultimate Mobile Presence Tool. Yes, Twitter is the utlimate mobile presence tool, since it’s the easiest to use (through SMS and mobile web access), and most accurate to stay connected at any time from anywhere… Jaiku has a definately a richer client but Twitter is the most easily integrated into most of your social networks, checkout MoodBlast that can simultaneously update multiple chat clients and web services presence tools. 2008 will also see the rise of lifestreaming apps like Tumblr, surprisingly simple on the web and looks great on your mobile phone.
Some of the downers of 2007:
- the sudden death of great blogger Marc Orchant - my deepest sympathies to Marc’s family.
- the whole blognation’s saga - one nation, many bugs…
- and just recently Om Malik’s heart attack - wish him strength, get well soon, Om!
Definately an urge for all bloggers not to forget about their daily excercise, no less!
I wish all my readers a great and magic 2008!
2008, 3G, 3g iphone, Analysis, Android, apple, bebo, convergence, Cool Devices, drm, emi, facebook, floobs, google, htc, innovation, iphone, itunes, kazivu, kyte, kyte.tv, leweb3, location based, Mashup, mobile, mobile 2.0, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Blog, Mobile Content, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile marketing, mobile music, Mobile OS, Mobile RSS, Mobile Search, mobile video, mobile video blogging, mobile web, mobile world congress, mobileweb, mowser, Multi Touch Screen, myspace, NFC, nokia, Open Handset Alliance, Operators, os, personal rights management, Predictions, prm, rcrdlbl, seesmic, social media, sony bmg, startups, taptu, telefonica, touch dial, Trends, universal, user experience, warner, watermark, web 2.0, wireless, youtube
MyStrands.TV - Your Personalised Music TV Channel
1 Comment Published by Rudy De Waele September 4th, 2007 in Mobile Music, Social Media, web 2.0, Announcements, Analysis, Music, Fun, mobile 2.0, Trends, Innovation, Spanish Startups, StartupsThe future of online TV, music and video content is going to be personalized and recommended, Mystrands just released a personalized online video service called MyStrands.TV. Nothing really mobile just yet but sooOOO cool I had to blog it here.
My teenage daughters and their friends TV viewing patterns changed completely the last year: they just don’t sit and watch TV anymore, they sit in front of the PC with their friends, deciding themselves what to watch, receiving links and recommendations from their IM peers - now I just need to get another free wi-fi connected pc or laptop connected to the plasma screen and they’re all set for the perfect interactive viewing experience
I had the pleasure to discover the new MyStrands service a couple of days ago and it’s really adding value to just watching YouTube video’s - MyStrands.TV is powered by MyStrands APIs and the music videos come from YouTube. Logging to MyStrands.tv proposes you an endless playlist of music videos that are personalized specifically for you…. based on your music listening history and recommendations. The first time you might find that the recommendations are based on existing channels, genres and a-like artists but actually this new recommendation tool is proposing music and concert video’s of my favorite artists based on my existing MyStrands profile, now isn’t that cool?
Richard MacManus researched the Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time a couple of weeks ago at Read/Write Web. He mentioned that “7 of the top 10 are music videos. So music videos are something that people want to watch online and there is a need for an easy way to organize or personalize this.”
Typing some of my favorite artists like Roxy Music, Miles Davis and Serge Gainsbourg for example brings up an excellent choice of all-time music video’s and concerts, a real delight to see some stuff again I hadn’t seen in years and discover some new video’s I didn’t know about.
Watch the recommended video’s on the right, the recommendations are really excellent, you can view more vid’s of the same artist or a similar one - or jump to another artist, view the community people who listen to this artist as well; you can favorite video’s and send them to friends. To me, this has been a great experience with many pleasant surprises and my kids LOVE it!
FYI: If you don’t have a MyStrands account, and you just want to try out MyStrands.TV before deciding whether to sign up, just type in the name of an artist and MyStrands builds a custom music video channel for you.
I believe MyStrands is taking a major step towards how online media is going to be consumed in the future, it’s community-based, personalized and with recommendations from peers and friends.
More links on MyStrands.TV personalized online video service here:
Mashable - MyStrands Launches YouTube-Powered Custom TV
TechCrunch - MyStrands Launches Music Video Discovery Service, MyStrands.tv
Read/Write Web - MyStrands.TV Launched - It’s last.fm For Video
And oh, for mTrends readers and mobile enthusiasts, if you haven’t MyStrands Social Player installed on your mobile yet, click here to download MyStrands for Symbian; you may also want to visit MyStrands labs page to check out their latest beta.
(disclosure note on my MyStrands involvement here)
Analysis, Announcements, concert video, Consumer Generated Media, Fun, innovation, internet, mobile music, Music, music video, mystrands, mystrands.tv, personalised, recommendation, social media, social player, spanish startups, startups, Trends, tv, video, web 2.0
On Nokia’s Ovi Brand Services
6 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele August 30th, 2007 in Mobile Music, Social Media, Operators, Mobile Web, Mobile Lifestyle, Cool Devices, Analysis, Usability, mobile 2.0, S60, Trends, Nokia, Games, Mobile Games, Convergence, N95
What I like most in Nokia’s strategy is its constant ability to look forward and move ahead with the changes. Nokia Flagship Store announcements already positioned Nokia with an independant retail strategy, it’s obvious that once there, there’s a different world on top of selling devices…
There has been a lot of fingertip heating since Nokia launched its Ovi Internet Services, a predictable, but smart move by Nokia for regular mTrends readers 
The idea is to pull the Nokia Music Store, N-Gage, Nokia Maps, and all future Nokia services into a single gateway of integrated service offerings. You can view yesterdays’ webcast anouncements here.
Nokia has been very active in the convergent area’s of internet and mobility services. With a solid 38% marketshare (some 900 million active customers!), the company has always played a leading role in the mobile value chain and knows a lot about its consumer habits. Nokia also has been releasing some really great N-Series devices since last year, the experiences gathered from those popular high-end devices are now finetuned and sharpened resulting in 4 new mobile devices (to be released before year-end).
I have been lucky to be able to experiment with Nokia Maps and I like the service a lot, it’s actually an awesome experience available on a mobile phone. The N95 with its build-in GPS makes geographical search really context relevant and opens the path for a lot of new kinds of services linked to locations. Personally I believe more in a user-driven community services and tools build model for the future such as Plazes and Dopplr build on Google Maps api’s but time will tell which services consumers will finally choose for and use.
The N-Gage portal is all about Nokia’s next-gen games (reserve your player name now!) where game fans will have more and more options to play multiplayer games in a constantly connected world - Instant Media Now! Web 2.0 has had a huge influence on the game development with regards to user-generated content, social networking and general connectivity. Watch Digital Chocolate in this next-gen game content space, not to underestimate the - also yesterday anounced - Sony-Ericsson Playstation Phone, yes… real device convergence is happening!
Another great move into internet service offerings is that Nokia and Microsoft have joined forces to provide customers with a new suite of Windows Live services specifically designed for Nokia devices. Starting today Nokia customers in eleven countries with compatible S60 devices can download the new suite enabling access to Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces. Smart move knowing there’s some 465 million Microsoft Messenger clients today!
The downside of that deal (and biggest surprise to me yesterday) was not the anouncement of the Nokia Music Store itself but the decision that Nokia will use Microsoft PlayReady technology for “flexible access to digital entertainment“. Flexible? How flexible is the next question to me then, while Apple unveiled a higher quality DRM-Free Music with EMI on iTunes in April, Nokia goes the opposite direction with Microsoft?
I tried to find more detailed information on how restrictive the DRM will be but couldn’t find anything relevant but this Microsoft PlayReady White Paper, despite the many anouncements yesterday. BoingBoing reported the new music store will allow for over-the-air downloads,
“currently priced at 1 Euro a song and 10 Euro-a-month all-you-can-eat subscriptions that will work on your PC. (It’s not entirely clear if you’ll be able to download songs to your PC on the all-you-can-eat and also sync them to your Ovi-compatible phone. The verbiage I’m seeing is “streaming,” so it seems unlikely.)”
Most probably Nokia will decide on a country-per-country basis, depending on the distributor. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound as a pirate protecter but I’m just worried as a consumer. mTrends readers know about my rants and experiences with this topic (for an overview check my DRM Free At Last! post).
I’m completely in favour of the OPEN DRM model (buy once, use everywhere!): I buy the digital content once but I am able to carry and transfer the song/video/movie everywhere on my different devices and pc’s and share it with my family and friends. Companies really need to learn to TRUST the consumers, illegal downloading always existed and will always exist in a minor form but as a consumer I can only urge to give us a fair DRM, especially for those consumers who want to buy digital content.
One more example here below of how DRM-restrictive content works for the consumer - and then I really hope I don’t have to write on this anymore
On my summer holidays, besides my fully stored N95, I took a 2GB USB-stick with me with full of music (legally bought CD’s imported as mp3’s) to be played wherever the occasion appeared. Now when compiling my summer music collection, I mixed up with some songs I bought on iTunes… At a certain moment, at a party, someone was asking for some kind of artist I had on my music-stick, we copied it to the iBook available connected to the speakers, when everybody around the pool was excited to hear that song, the machine responded “need permission to play this song, please fill-in your password” - hell, we weren’t even connected to the internet. Now, you think this is fair? Flexible? Helping the artists? Create more business? Come on (big) guys, please get real!
NOTE: it would be great if any Nokia or Microsoft rep could provide some details on the DRM restrictions that will be used (or not) using PlayReady
5310, 5610, Analysis, convergence, Cool Devices, devices, Entertainment, Games, Internet services, location, maps, mobile cell, Mobile Games, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, mobile web, Music, music phone, N Series, N81, n95, nokia, Nokia Music Store, Operators, ovi, phones, s60, series, social media, Trends, usability, XpressMusic
Mobile Web Revisited 7-7-7 (Update)
4 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele July 8th, 2007 in Mobile Apps, Mobile Web, web 2.0, Analysis, Usability, Mobile Search, Mobile RSS, mobile 2.0, Mobile Blog, QR codes, W3C, Mobile Video, Nokia, iPhone, Mobile Games, N800, ConvergenceI know how mTrends looks great on a PSP and on a Nokia N800; I haven’t seen my blog however on the iPhone, but I suppose it looks ok - the iPhone features Safari, the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device.
UPDATE => Kelly sended me some shots of mTrends on the iPhone, looks pretty cool, I cannot see from the screenshots if all my sidebar widgets work and if the feed subscription functionality works automatically in the mobile Safari browser… Anyway thanks, Kelly!
Since it’s going to take a while before everyone is able to buy an iPhone, and before device manufacture competitors catch up with Apple, browsing the Mobile Web stays somehow a non-standardised fragmented experience for most people. I have been writing about this confusion before, now it was kind of weird reading this ’strikethrough’ story from Scobleizer on how the iPhone gets confused with the mobile version of the Google Reader. Note that the Safari browser shows the desktop web pages - the ‘real’ internet, as most people know it; Robert just got confused with the different - mobile web - URL’s to browse to.
Now both ways to acces the internet will most probably have to live next to eachother on mobile devices since no real solution is in sight to converge the mobile web as ‘one real web’. There’s the ‘full’ browsing experience possible on the high-end devices like the iPhone, PSP’s and for example the Nokia N800 and then there are the ‘adaptive’ browsers that will adapt at it’s best the existing web page to your phone, like Nokia S60, Openwave and Opera browsers and others like Google Mobile transcoding normal web pages so they fit the mobile screen.
But what about the Mobile Web users?
To my view there are 4 different types of mobile web users to distinguish (some with a combined use), people who:
1. want to read their favourite feeds (through mobile browser or standalone applications)
2. browse websites and pages (using Nokia, Opera Mini or Safari browser on the mobile)
3. search from within a browser using Google Mobile, Yahoo! oneSearch, …
4. use standalone apps/tools to connect to people or communities like Jaiku, Twitter, Fring, Google Mobile Maps, etc…
Currently I use 1 and 4 the most, since browsing the web on the mobile is simply still too annoying and slow and searching on my phone not context relevant for me as it is now; I read feeds and use standalone apps to connect to people and find locations, that’s it. With the coming of more and more webapps, RSS tools and communities going mobile the coming months - YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Netvibes, and alikes - some of them already there - the ways to get to those apps will become even more diverse, not to mention about how to handle correctly Mobile SEO.
For a simplified any (txt) feed ‘works on any device’ solution there’s still the real pre-cursor of the Mobile Web, Winksite. David Harper writes in this Love the Mobile Web post, how Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile Internet sites and build simple mobile connections via mobile phones:
“Winksite is the first standards compliant mobile Website builder that also includes RSS-driven content deployment and mobile-tuned community features such as forum, chat, and polls. This approach delivers fresh content, fast-loading screens, and universally accessible community features to you and your audience. The Winksite service is a free and fully hosted solution. No software install on your phone is necessary to view a Winksite powered mobile site. Learn more about how it works.”
I’ve had mTrends on Winksite since a while